Eleanor Davies, Writings 1647–1652

Eleanor Davies, Writings 1647–1652
Author: Teresa Feroli
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 602
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351941267

In 1625 Lady Eleanor Davies' life took a dramatic turn when, by her account in 1641, a "Heavenly voice" told her "There is Ninteene yeares and a halfe to the day of Judgement, and you as the meek Virgin". That same year she published her first treatise, A Warning to the Dragon, initiating her controversial career as a writer of prophetic tracts. Between 1641 and 1652 she would produce some 66 of them, using the Bible to gauge the cosmic significance of events, great and small, taking place in her nation and in her personal life. They focus on a complex of personal and political events that Lady Eleanor thought indicated the fast approach of the "last days" foretold by the biblical prophets Daniel and John of Patmos. A complement to Teresa Feroli's facsimile edition of Eleanor Davies' pre-1640 texts (Ashgate, 2000), this pair of volumes reproduces 60 texts from the corpus of 66 printed between 1641 and 1652.

Handmaid of the Holy Spirit

Handmaid of the Holy Spirit
Author: Esther S. Cope
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1992
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780472103034

Prophecy, madness, and the history of war and revolution in 17th-century Britain color this study of the life of Eleanor Davies

Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies

Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies
Author: Lady Eleanor Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 1995-12-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0195358635

Eleanor Davies (1590-1652) was one of the most prolific women writing in early seventeenth-century England. This volume includes thirty-eight of the sixty-some prophetic tracts that she published. Inspired to prophecy by a visionary experience in 1625, the year of Charles I's accession to the throne, she devoted herself to warning her contemporaries that the Day of Judgement was imminent. Her zeal and her intricately constructed tracts confounded contemporaries who called her mad. She experienced repeated imprisonment and also confinement to Bedlam, London's mental hospital. The tracts tell her own story as woman and prophet. They offer an opportunity to study her experiences as wife, mother, and widow; they also exhibit her extraordinary intellect, extensive education, and fascination with words. In showing how England's history was fulfilling the biblical prophecies in the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation, she commented about the political and religious controversies of the turbulent period preceding and during the English Civil War and Revolution.